Portsmouth Brewery's new beer has menopausal remedies

Rachel Forrest

Thursday

Oct 5, 2017 at 7:37 AMOct 5, 2017 at 7:37 AM

In the face of pressure from rampantly touted youth culture, more and more women are embracing their 50s, 60s and beyond. We're letting the grays stay, gorgeously, and proudly show off the beautiful lines on our faces, utterly botox-free. We go into beer bars by ourselves and drink hefty IPAs, just like Millennial craft beer lover guys do. A new beer from The Portsmouth Brewery celebrates the liberating aspects of the menopausal stage of our lives.

Libeeration is a gruit style brew made with herbs and flowers believed to relieve symptoms of menopause like sleeplessness, hot flashes and mood swings. It will be released at the brewery on Thursday, Oct. 5. Joanne Francis, creative director and co-owner of The Portsmouth Brewery and Smuttynose Brewing Company with her longtime partner Peter Egelston, came up with idea for this beer after more than two decades in a heavily male dominated industry.

“Liberation is an idea that I had about five or six years ago after (at that time) 20-plus years in the beer industry with my business and life partner Peter Egleston. Our particular audience for Smuttynose, not so much the Portsmouth Brewery, is developing beers for the 21- to 35-year old male. As I aged, I began to feel more and more marginalized and more of an outcast in the business that I worked in and I knew that a lot of girlfriends had a huge passion for beer, but nothing was really particularly being devoted to this age group, the over050 woman. So that was sort of the genesis of the idea and it sort of has been percolating all these years.”

Joanne says when she first brought up the idea for the beer, it was met with a squeamish reaction, even disgust.

But not at The Portsmouth Brewery, not anymore. Joanne formed a panel of women's health practitioners, herbalists and Head Brewer Matt Gallagher to help develop the beer.

“We worked with the herbalist first coming up with a long list of herbs that all had beneficial qualities alleviating symptoms associated with menopause,“ Gallagher says. “And we had a women's health practitioner who sort of was like ‘Oh, maybe I'd steer away from those two, combining them with alcohol and things like that.' What Joanne and I did was we we ordered little 1-oz. samples of all of the herbs that we had kind of been steered toward and then we had a tea drinking afternoon. We hydrated them all in hot water and took down some tasting notes and some of them were ‘Oh, yes, definitely, that has to go into this beer. Tastes great, has a lot of beneficial qualities to it.' And then there were certain ones that were ‘Mmm, no, too bitter, it's gross. I don't care what it does for you.'”

Libeeration contains a combination of ingredients herbalists use to help women dealing with hormone shifts that come with age, including Motherwort, Lemon Balm, Chamomile, Stinging Nettle, Mugwort, Rose, Chickweed and Damiana. A small dose of saphir hops in the secondary fermentation adds a pleasant tangerine note to the finish and can help with sleep, according to Matt Gallagher.

“After we did our tea sample, Matt stood behind the bar. He looked at me and he said, ‘I'm so mellow,'" Francis says. “I went upstairs to my office and took a nap for 15 minutes. We were so blissed out.”

The beer is a gruit, an ancient herb and flower-based brew which doesn't contain hops, but Matt says that the way he uses the hops addition still puts the beer into the gruit category.

“I think we, I, feel comfortable as we're calling it a gruit. I didn't put any hops into the kettle on the hot side so we weren't extracting any bitterness that way. I did want to get hops into this simply because they have such beneficial qualities as a sleep aid and also they're loaded with phytoestrogens. By dry hopping with it, you know, to me the definition of a gruit is when brewers didn't have access to hops they needed some sort of bittering agent from their local backyard that they could they could bring balance to the beer with. I employed hops because I have access to those herbs – you know hop, is just an herb as well. So basically a dry hopped gruit.”

Francis points out, “The FDA really frowns on any kind of medicinal curative from any kind of herbs or flowers. That's well-known in the health food aisles and places like Herbal Path. You just tiptoe around that as we are. This is meant as a fun product and perhaps it's an awareness awakening for women at a certain age that think ‘Oh, only wine ... I get fat from drinking beer.'"

To the contrary, says Francis. Many women in their 50s were on the cutting edge of the craft beer scene at the beginning.

“Some of my friends are huge 'hopheads.' They are radical beer drinkers. Let's keep in mind that all of us at this age, we pretty much cut our beer drinking teeth on the craft beer industry. In the mid-'80s, we were the hipsters of that era. So this is natural for women in this particular age group to be drinking beer. It's not anything new.”

Some of her friends also helped name the beer. She sent out an email for a big brainstorm and one suggestion stuck, one that helps to “shift the mentality from focusing on the negative aspects of this stage in life to celebrating the liberating aspects.”

“The word 'liberation' did say it all. So that was it. It jelled. And really the main point of all of this is that at our age, it is not a diminishing thing, it is an expanding thing, it is a beautiful thing and I refuse to listen to some people that say ‘Oh, we're getting old.' I think, ‘My god, when I'm 90, I'm going to look at 57 that I am now and say I was so young then, I was so vital!' And so I choose that and I think this name is a perfect way of explaining this time of my life.”

The Dish: “Know Your Fishermen, Know Your Fish,” yes, the KNOW Fish dinners are back. Dine on seafood caught that day on rod and reel by Capt. Tim Rider out of Eliot, Maine, on Oct. 12 at 7th Settlement in Dover with chef Taylor Miller, and on Nov. 2 at Otis in Exeter with chef Lee Frank. Proceeds benefit One Fish Foundation and Chef's Collaborative Good Food Fund. Tickets are a mere $50. Go to www.eventbrite.com/e/know-fish-dinnerstm-tickets-37692008813

Rachel Forrest is a former restaurant owner who lives in Exeter (and Austin, Texas). She can be reached by email at rachel.forrest@localmediagroupinc.com. Read more of her Dining Out reviews online.

Go & Do

What: Libeeration Special Release Party featuring an Honorary First Pour Mystery Special Guest

When: 6 to 8 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 5; Toast at 6:45 p.m.

Where: Portsmouth Brewery, 56 Market St., Portsmouth

More info: Libeeration will be available on draught and in bottles until it runs out. It could be days or weeks. There will be bottles available for a limited time in the retail store at 56 Market St. Visit www.portsmouthbrewery.com.

Listen: To a podcast of Rachel Forrest's interview with Joanne Francis embedded in this story online at www.seacoastonline.com.

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